


A Snape Drabble Collection

by DrJekyl



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Challenge fic, Drabble, Gen, collection, missing moment, pre-HBP, snape100
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-30
Updated: 2008-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Responses to Snape 100 community challenges between December 2003 and May 2005.  Often of a darker tone, and featuring a number of other characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Challenges 1-4

 

### There Is No Santa Claus

_Challenge #1: Bah, Humbug! Snape and Christmas._

It was a day like any other. There were still chores to be done, wood to be chopped. Father was still abed, sleeping off the night's excesses. But Mother, an odd note to the morning, was at the stove, tending a rare rack of bacon. The smell of it filled the room.

Mother turned when she heard him enter, her smile sad and brittle when she hugged him tightly, pressed a small, hard object into his hand. A ring, diamond and gold.

"This was my grandfather's," she told him softly. "Now it's yours."

"Merry Christmas, Severus."

"Don't tell your father."

 

### Untitled Challenge #2

_Challenge #2: What if Snape was given the DADA position?_

"What's it like?" asked Harry.

Lee and Angelina exchanged a meaningful look.

"Never had a lesson like it," Angelina said.

"He k_nows_, man," said Lee.

"Knows what?" said Ron.

"Knows what it's like to be out there _doing_ it," said Lee impressively.

"Doing what?" asked Harry.

"The Dark Arts," said Angelina.

"Don't you mean 'Defense Against'?" said Ron.

"Snape, remember? He shows us a spell, gives us ten minutes to work out how to counter it, casts it on someone and then sets a mountain of homework."

"He's done it all," said Angelina.

"'Mazing," said Lee.

"Scary," corrected Angelina.

"...yeah."

 

### To The Victor

_Challenge #3: Snape's Best Memory_

"Well?"

Severus quirked an eyebrow at the blonde man and opened the letter that had been thrust into his still over-large hands. He skimmed it, then permitted himself a small smile.

"Twenty."

"Twenty N.E.W.T.s? I'm impressed, Severus. That's quite an achievement."

"It's still three shy of the school record," Snape replied thoughtfully, a frown tugging at his features. "They must have docked me in the Transfiguration and Care of bloody Magical Creatures practicals."

"No matter. I've got news that will make you smile."

"Oh?"

"You'll be Dux," said Lucius, grinning. "Potter and that blood traitor Black only got seventeen each."

 

### Mirror Image

_Challenge #4: Someone has slipped Snape veritaserum. Who, when, where, why, and/or how?_

 

Snape and Black glared at each other across the table.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Is the great and fearless Gryffindor afraid of a little truth?"

"I don't see you picking up your glass, Snape."

Snape snatched up and downed his shot, upending the empty container on the table. Black scowled but quickly did the same.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Is this stuff working yet?"

"N... yes, Black, it is now."

"Then ask a question. You drank first, I answer first."

A pause.

"Why do you hate me so much?"

"Because I could have been you."

"Odd. That's the same reason I hated _you_."

 

### Tea at the End of the World

  
_Challenge: #5 Snape &amp; Harry (double drabble)_

Harry discovers that Snape makes a surprisingly good confidant. The other wizard refuses to talk to anyone that he doesn't trust. Harry was both surprised and gratified to find himself counted amongst that small but august company.

Harry also discovers that Snape's memory for Potions, Arithmancy and Dark Arts remains unimpaired. Occasionally Harry will bring in a particularly knotty problem from work and see if that fractured intelligence can find the solution. To date it has every time.

For his part, Snape seems remarkably lucid, if one can overlook his obsession with routine (and one or two other quirks). On one occasion Harry showed up thirty minutes late to their tea, only to discover Snape in the midst of a violent rage. He took three stunners to the chest before staff were able to sedate him.

At other times, Snape holds lengthy conversations with James, though 'conversations' may not be the appropriate descriptor for their dialogue. Verbal brawls. Confessionals. Screaming matches.

Harry plays along in the hope that it may one day succeed in putting some of the old demons that plague the man to rest. It's the least he can do: Harry, after all, has a debt to pay.


	2. Challenges 6-8

### Outsider

_Challenge #6: Snape and Sex_

Sex, in Snape's experience, has always been something that happened to other people. Furtive fumblings in the dark, the gentle touch of a lover's hand, the melding of bodies into one whole (or so the poets vapidly say)...

He's never really seen the point the whole business, save for the purpose of procreation (which, truth to tell, he's never really seen the point in either). It's such a sweaty, sticky and really rather ridiculous exercise, it's a wonder people partake in it at all.

Besides, it's utterly inconceivable now to allow someone to get that close, trust them that much.

### Forsworn

_Challenge #7: The Three OotP Memories_

He stepped forward, hand upraised. She stumbled. The hand began its downward arc...

...and stopped, caught, twisted, pinned painfully behind his back.

"What do you think you're doing?" Severus hissed, features tight with anger.

"I think that should be obvious, _little brother_," Sophronius hissed back.

"All too," Severus snarled. "Maria, take the boy and go."

"She'll do no..."

"Silence, Sophronius! You try my patience." Severus twisted the arm further. "Maria, go!"

"I try?" Sophronius gasped, "What gives you the right?"

"We swore each other once that we'd never become our father. I will not let you break oath to me."

### Duty of Care

_Challenge #8 : Snape and a Weasley_

Snape awoke and instantly wished he hadn't. He hurt _everywhere_.

"I was starting to think you'd never wake up."

He managed a non-committal grunt in reply as the hazy shape looming above him slowly resolved itself into Molly Weasley.

"I've patched up the shoulder," she said briskly, "and I've given you something for the fever, but that nose and leg need seeing to by a medi-wizard."

He looked up at her blearily, puzzled.

"Why?

She understood.

"Because someone has to take care of you. No-one else is willing. Least of all," she added softly as he fell back asleep, "yourself."

 


	3. A trilogy response to Challenge 8: Snape and Weasley

### Apprentice

_Challenge #8: Snape and a Weasley_

"Well?"

Ginny gathered up her courage, remembering the Chamber. Remembering _him_.

"Professor, I... I want to learn Occlumency," she blurted out.

A pause.

"You'd be better advised to ask the Headmaster."

"But he's busy."

"Am I not?" he asked, too mildly.

"No, sir! It just wouldn't be... I wouldn't feel -"

"Comfortable? You fear what he, not I, would do with your thoughts and memories? You fear his manipulation, him knowing your weaknesses... and strengths? Interesting."

She stared at him.

"Legilimency and Occlumency often go hand in hand, Miss Weasley," he smiled sourly. "You will learn that. Tomorrow at seven."

### Journeyman

"_Legilimens_!"

She was eight and watching her brothers play Quidditch in the field near the Burrow, fighting back tears because they wouldn't let her join in.

She was eleven, frantically scrubbing blood off her hands in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

She was... _She was_...

Suddenly her mind _shifted_, and she was standing in Snape's office.

He watched her speculatively for a couple of seconds with what might have been a small smile but was, Ginny decided, more likely to have been a trick of the light.

"Good. You have been practicing. Again, and then perhaps we shall take the next step."

### Master

"Sherbert lemon?"

"No thank you, sir."

Ginny felt his intrusion then, gentle as a feather where Snape's had been scalpel-sharp.

"Ginevra, my dear, I shall cut to the chase. Professor McGonagall tells me that you've been disappearing from your bed periodically over the last few weeks. No-one seems to know where you're getting to. We're all quite concerned."

This was to her final examination: to lie here and lie with impunity. _Watch his eyes_, Snape'd said, _watch, and you'll know_.

She brought to mind the memories that supported her words.

"I go walking, sir."

Ginny watched. There was no twinkle.

 


	4. Challenges 13, 18, 19, 22 & 23

### Conditioned Response

_Challenge #13: Colour_

Severus Snape always wore black. He was infamous for it.

As with most forms of infamy, speculation was rife. The suspicious believed that it was for concealment. The practical pointed out that black is an excellent colour for hiding the inevitable results of teaching Potions. The sentimental suggested that he was in mourning.

But the truth was rather more subtle and cunning.

Severus Snape always wore black. Ergo, a man not wearing black was not Severus Snape.

It was funny how the human mind worked, Snape mused, his nervous target passing within two feet of his red-cloaked figure, funny indeed.

### The Most Important Lesson

_Challenge #18: Snape's first day of teaching_

The speech was an old one, given by every Head of House since time immemorial. House legend purported it to have first come from the thin lips of Salazar Slytherin himself.

The words, their cadence, came easily to him, soft sibilants absorbed by the anticipating silence. Then the speech ended, and all was silent save the crackling fire.

He paused.

"The days that come will change the face of our world, for good or ill. Look around you. These are your allies, your friends, and the only people who will stand beside you should all fail. Whatever else, remember that."

### Flutterby

_Challenge: #19 Young Snape's first incident of accidental magic._

Black and white and iridescent blue, shimmering above the leaf of a fern, just out of reach.

It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

If he stands on tip-toe, maybe he can snatch it from the air to hold in a loosely clasped fist, feel the fragile life beating under his fingers.

Delicate hands reach up, straining, stretching, but always falling short.

Oh how he wants it, wants it to hold and admire so badly it hurts. But it flutters, just out of reach.

A whisper of sound. The air ripples.

And the butterfly falls lifeless from the sky.

### Late

_Challenge #22: AU Shrieking Shack_

The scream echoed.

Silently cursing, James put on an extra burst of speed, rounding the last twist in the tunnel and squeezing through the small opening. He heard a door slam shut overhead, and the snarling of the werewolf.

Wand in hand, James took the stairs two at a time, slowing only when he reached the top. There, at the far end of the dusty hall, was Snape, back against a door that shook under repeated impacts.

Their eyes met.

"I'll see you all expelled for this," Snape whispered, then screamed again in agony as his first change overtook him.

### Dreamless

_Challenge #23: Snape dreaming. What would he dream about?_

Snape dreams of many things.

Sometimes they're premonitions, a glimpse of things to come. At other times they're distorted visions of the present, or random images thrown together by his unconscious mind. Tonight, for example, he finds that all the tea in the world has turned to gelatine, and he wanders the halls of Hogwarts in search of the right fork.

Sometimes, though, too often, he dreams of the past, wakes up sweating. There is no recourse; only fools take Dreamless Sleep Potion on a regular basis, for to go without dreams is to go insane.

He appreciates the irony.

 


End file.
